VF is a shambles

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#1171352 8-Nov-2014 16:24

sbiddle:
ckc: You used to be able to just get TV from Telstra,

In the entire history of Vodafone, TelstraClear, TelstraSaturn you've never been able to buy TV just by itself. TV by itself existed in the Kiwi Cable days, and in the very early days as Saturn, but once Saturn expanded from Kapiti into Wellington, overlaid copper for their phone services and moved to bundling Sky channels rather than sourcing their content directly you've never been able to take TV by itself, it's always had to be bundled with either phone or internet. Historically this was because of their Sky resale agreement, now it's probably just a business decision.

Telstra did it for us in 2009 in Wellington.

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#1171435 8-Nov-2014 18:46

sbiddle:
ckc: You used to be able to just get TV from Telstra,

In the entire history of Vodafone, TelstraClear, TelstraSaturn you've never been able to buy TV just by itself. TV by itself existed in the Kiwi Cable days, and in the very early days as Saturn, but once Saturn expanded from Kapiti into Wellington, overlaid copper for their phone services and moved to bundling Sky channels rather than sourcing their content directly you've never been able to take TV by itself, it's always had to be bundled with either phone or internet. Historically this was because of their Sky resale agreement, now it's probably just a business decision.

Not quite right - when I was there from 2000-2001 they did allow TV on its own. But they didn't heavily advertise it, and when they started simply re-broadcasting Sky channels in 2002 (from memory) that option was discontinued. Today I imagine it wouldn't be easy to get the TV service on its own.

DarthKermit

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#1171632 9-Nov-2014 12:50

So they're laying off 500 staff. Out of how many?

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matisyahu

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#1171891 10-Nov-2014 04:53

freitasm:
networkn:
TimA: lol. VF has made like 500 people redundant. In the news and all.

I must be a grumpy old goat as I can't see the humour of the situation at all.

Youngsters these days use "lol" for anything. It is an overused expression and it makes me cringe.

As for your comment, yes, hard to see humour in such a situation. People's lives are being shaken to the core. Some have not experienced how bad it can be.

Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit, their call times are horrendous and it isn't as though their employees are sitting around idle waiting for something to happen - personally they should be going in the opposite direction and hiring more people or at least investing more money into technology as to reduce the need for people to ring up in the first place. It reminds me of when I had a personal loan with ASB - if I have to ring up to ask for an operator to make an extra payment to my personal loan then there is something very wrong with the current setup in online banking (they've only just added that facility recently). Same can be said for Vodafone - if I have to ring up for someone to do something that could be done online then there is something severely wrong because the only time I should ever need to ring up someone at Vodafone is if my set top box has exploded or my cable modem has become possessed by an evil spirit and I require an exorcism asap.

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

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#1171894 10-Nov-2014 06:37

kawaii:
freitasm:
networkn:
TimA: lol. VF has made like 500 people redundant. In the news and all.

I must be a grumpy old goat as I can't see the humour of the situation at all.

Youngsters these days use "lol" for anything. It is an overused expression and it makes me cringe.

As for your comment, yes, hard to see humour in such a situation. People's lives are being shaken to the core. Some have not experienced how bad it can be.

Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit, their call times are horrendous and it isn't as though their employees are sitting around idle waiting for something to happen - personally they should be going in the opposite direction and hiring more people or at least investing more money into technology as to reduce the need for people to ring up in the first place. It reminds me of when I had a personal loan with ASB - if I have to ring up to ask for an operator to make an extra payment to my personal loan then there is something very wrong with the current setup in online banking (they've only just added that facility recently). Same can be said for Vodafone - if I have to ring up for someone to do something that could be done online then there is something severely wrong because the only time I should ever need to ring up someone at Vodafone is if my set top box has exploded or my cable modem has become possessed by an evil spirit and I require an exorcism asap.

They reported a $25+ Million loss.

Not all staff are support staff or remotely capable of being support staff. In a merger the size of VF/TCL there would have been a large number of duplicate roles inherited that need to be cleaned up, they have reached that point. They will no doubt hire needed staff when that process is complete.

Andib

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#1171896 10-Nov-2014 06:56

I would say the majority of staff that are on the block for redundancies wouldn't have the first clue what to do when it came to supporting the general public with their Broadband or mobile issues. Nor would most of them want to.
Things may have changed since working for them but when I was there it became very noticable the amount of 'Extra' staff around the place once they finished relocating staff between the old TCL Office and VF Head Office.

For example when they cross trained staff and merged the ex TCL Broadband / Fixed line call center with the VF one they now were left with an extra Call Center manager.
I would imagine the only cuts from the call centers would be jobs like that not front line staff.

There's no doubt that VF know their wait times aren't great but when a company has 500 un needed jobs it's hard to get approval to hire more agents even when you still have the normal call center turn over of staff.

As you can imagine there is a list of duplicate jobs in upper & middle management that can be done by one person instead of the two where as customer numbers haven't really changed that much so they still need the front line staff.

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Demeter

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#1172035 10-Nov-2014 11:09

kawaii: Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit

No. We reported a huge loss this financial year. I appreciate that from an outsider's perspective it is really easy to come up with 'solutions' for the problems that you can see, but it goes a little deeper than just call centre wait times. See Andib's post, as he's summed it up pretty well. We'll get there in end.

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Coil

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#1172267 10-Nov-2014 15:58

No laugh at the fact at all.
I have seen many key people with a wealth of knowledge let go. It seems to be the middle management according to some that are going. A few staff that have been there 6 years or more are getting let go too. (Nice big redundancy payouts)

oxnsox

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#1172344 10-Nov-2014 18:22

At the end of the day (as My Key would say), its a business decision. And who better knows their business than themselves.

But it would be nice for its customers, if VF did call back when they say they will. They're running billboards in Christchurch along the lines of 'the business that takes (& follows up) the call - gets the business'.

Hmmm....... I havent had the promised follow-up of last week, or last year, or before that, so I've simply changed my expectations and

mattwnz

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#1172354 10-Nov-2014 18:48

KiwiNZ:
kawaii:
freitasm:
networkn:
TimA: lol. VF has made like 500 people redundant. In the news and all.

I must be a grumpy old goat as I can't see the humour of the situation at all.

Youngsters these days use "lol" for anything. It is an overused expression and it makes me cringe.

As for your comment, yes, hard to see humour in such a situation. People's lives are being shaken to the core. Some have not experienced how bad it can be.

Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit, their call times are horrendous and it isn't as though their employees are sitting around idle waiting for something to happen - personally they should be going in the opposite direction and hiring more people or at least investing more money into technology as to reduce the need for people to ring up in the first place. It reminds me of when I had a personal loan with ASB - if I have to ring up to ask for an operator to make an extra payment to my personal loan then there is something very wrong with the current setup in online banking (they've only just added that facility recently). Same can be said for Vodafone - if I have to ring up for someone to do something that could be done online then there is something severely wrong because the only time I should ever need to ring up someone at Vodafone is if my set top box has exploded or my cable modem has become possessed by an evil spirit and I require an exorcism asap.

They reported a $25+ Million loss.

Not all staff are support staff or remotely capable of being support staff. In a merger the size of VF/TCL there would have been a large number of duplicate roles inherited that need to be cleaned up, they have reached that point. They will no doubt hire needed staff when that process is complete.

Losses on paper though may not be a true reflection of how the business is doing. It may represent a lot of investment etc, to grow the value of the company. Xero for instance makes losses but is in growth mode, and it's value has grown a lot.
But laying of staff is never easy, and is one of the reasons the top staff make big money. I would far prefer more evenly distributed wages throughout a company. Some CEOs of large companies over seas earn huge amounts of wage, many earn more in a week than some workers earn in a year. Do people need to earn that sort of money? You may as well just work for a year and then retire and travel the world.

quickymart

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#1172355 10-Nov-2014 18:48

oxnsox: At the end of the day (as My Key would say), its a business decision. And who better knows their business than themselves.

But it would be nice for its customers, if VF did call back when they say they will. They're running billboards in Christchurch along the lines of 'the business that takes (& follows up) the call - gets the business'.

Hmmm....... I havent had the promised follow-up of last week, or last year, or before that, so I've simply changed my expectations and

...moved to another provider?

matisyahu

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#1172384 10-Nov-2014 19:30

Demeter:
kawaii: Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit

No. We reported a huge loss this financial year. I appreciate that from an outsider's perspective it is really easy to come up with 'solutions' for the problems that you can see, but it goes a little deeper than just call centre wait times. See Andib's post, as he's summed it up pretty well. We'll get there in end.

Ah ok, the article I was reading was probably only talking about revenue but not the bottom line. If the end result are less generals and more soldiers then hopefully some of the problems will start being addressed. I feel sorry for those who are about to lose their jobs but I think at some level they knew that it couldn't continue forever - that at some point something and to be done.

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

MikeB4

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#1172387 10-Nov-2014 19:30

mattwnz:
KiwiNZ:
kawaii:
freitasm:
networkn:
TimA: lol. VF has made like 500 people redundant. In the news and all.

I must be a grumpy old goat as I can't see the humour of the situation at all.

Youngsters these days use "lol" for anything. It is an overused expression and it makes me cringe.

As for your comment, yes, hard to see humour in such a situation. People's lives are being shaken to the core. Some have not experienced how bad it can be.

Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit, their call times are horrendous and it isn't as though their employees are sitting around idle waiting for something to happen - personally they should be going in the opposite direction and hiring more people or at least investing more money into technology as to reduce the need for people to ring up in the first place. It reminds me of when I had a personal loan with ASB - if I have to ring up to ask for an operator to make an extra payment to my personal loan then there is something very wrong with the current setup in online banking (they've only just added that facility recently). Same can be said for Vodafone - if I have to ring up for someone to do something that could be done online then there is something severely wrong because the only time I should ever need to ring up someone at Vodafone is if my set top box has exploded or my cable modem has become possessed by an evil spirit and I require an exorcism asap.

They reported a $25+ Million loss.

Not all staff are support staff or remotely capable of being support staff. In a merger the size of VF/TCL there would have been a large number of duplicate roles inherited that need to be cleaned up, they have reached that point. They will no doubt hire needed staff when that process is complete.

Losses on paper though may not be a true reflection of how the business is doing. It may represent a lot of investment etc, to grow the value of the company. Xero for instance makes losses but is in growth mode, and it's value has grown a lot.
But laying of staff is never easy, and is one of the reasons the top staff make big money. I would far prefer more evenly distributed wages throughout a company. Some CEOs of large companies over seas earn huge amounts of wage, many earn more in a week than some workers earn in a year. Do people need to earn that sort of money? You may as well just work for a year and then retire and travel the world.

The higher wages are earnt, my wife has a senior position and earns well, she works very hard. She starts usually around 7am and finishes around 8pm sometimes later. She travels every week and travels overseas often sometimes for a fortnight where she works the full fortnight and returns to continue working. In the last two months she has been to China twice and goes again next month. It is right that she earns a high salary.

oxnsox

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#1172392 10-Nov-2014 19:43

KiwiNZ: Thehigher wages are earnt, my wife has a senior position and earns well, she works very hard. She starts usually around 7am and finishes around 8pm sometimes later. She travels every week and travels overseas often sometimes for a fortnight where she works the full fortnight and returns to continue working. In the last two months she has been to China twice and goes again next month. It is right that she earns a high salary.

NO.
It was never like this in my day. ;-)

NZCrusader

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#1172395 10-Nov-2014 19:45

KiwiNZ:
mattwnz:
KiwiNZ:
kawaii:
freitasm:
networkn:
TimA: lol. VF has made like 500 people redundant. In the news and all.

I must be a grumpy old goat as I can't see the humour of the situation at all.

Youngsters these days use "lol" for anything. It is an overused expression and it makes me cringe.

As for your comment, yes, hard to see humour in such a situation. People's lives are being shaken to the core. Some have not experienced how bad it can be.

Personally I can't work out how they can justify laying of 500 people given that they're making a decent profit, their call times are horrendous and it isn't as though their employees are sitting around idle waiting for something to happen - personally they should be going in the opposite direction and hiring more people or at least investing more money into technology as to reduce the need for people to ring up in the first place. It reminds me of when I had a personal loan with ASB - if I have to ring up to ask for an operator to make an extra payment to my personal loan then there is something very wrong with the current setup in online banking (they've only just added that facility recently). Same can be said for Vodafone - if I have to ring up for someone to do something that could be done online then there is something severely wrong because the only time I should ever need to ring up someone at Vodafone is if my set top box has exploded or my cable modem has become possessed by an evil spirit and I require an exorcism asap.

They reported a $25+ Million loss.

Not all staff are support staff or remotely capable of being support staff. In a merger the size of VF/TCL there would have been a large number of duplicate roles inherited that need to be cleaned up, they have reached that point. They will no doubt hire needed staff when that process is complete.

Losses on paper though may not be a true reflection of how the business is doing. It may represent a lot of investment etc, to grow the value of the company. Xero for instance makes losses but is in growth mode, and it's value has grown a lot.
But laying of staff is never easy, and is one of the reasons the top staff make big money. I would far prefer more evenly distributed wages throughout a company. Some CEOs of large companies over seas earn huge amounts of wage, many earn more in a week than some workers earn in a year. Do people need to earn that sort of money? You may as well just work for a year and then retire and travel the world.

The higher wages are earnt, my wife has a senior position and earns well, she works very hard. She starts usually around 7am and finishes around 8pm sometimes later. She travels every week and travels overseas often sometimes for a fortnight where she works the full fortnight and returns to continue working. In the last two months she has been to China twice and goes again next month. It is right that she earns a high salary.

I didn't know your wife was Judith Collins. :)

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